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Summary of Question:	Why can we eat vegetables?
Category:	General Sikhism
Date Posted:	Monday, 5/08/2000 10:47 PM MDT

I just have a question on food.

Why can't sikhs eat meat and eggs if they can eat plants and vegetables?
Don't you think vegetables have life?
Everything on this planet is created by God, right?
We feed vegetables so that they can grow and then we eat them. So why is there difference between eating vegetables, meats and eggs?

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Reply
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Vegetables don't have and ego. They don't choose their behaviour. One of the reasons we don't eat meat is that we take on the karma of the thing we eat. Vegetables have not taken any actions, so they don't have highly developed karma. They are pure life energy without ego. You have enough karma in your own life, you don't need to be adding the karma of thousands of animals to your life.

The other reason is that animal flesh is not healthy. There are virtually no studies that claim an all animal diet would be healthy, but thousands that show the benefits of the vegetable kingdom.

Vegetables don't have pain sensors, so it doesn't cause suffering like with animals. Remember, you are also creating karma when you kill something that doesn't want you to.

Here is one way to look at it - You can't eat anything unless it will freely allow you to kill it and eat it. If you try to stick a knife in an animal, it will run away. Try that with spinach, no problem. (Eggs are the menstruation of the chicken, so it should be considered as part of the chickens body. Eggs are liquid chickens.)
LSK